My Love Shall Ever Live Young extras
by Starshinedown
Summary: A collection of one-shots and shorts that accompany Aengus and My Love Shall Ever Live Young. Chapter 1 is "Her" which was previously a stand alone one-shot.
1. Her

**A/N: Alright, so rather than have _Her_ stand it's own, it is now Chapter One of _My Love Shall Ever Live Young Extras_. I haven't changed any content in this story; just added some more of the same variety.  
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**Disclaimer: The characters of Twilight are the property of Stephanie Meyer and Little, Brown. I'm just borrowing them to work my way out of writer's block and have some fun.**

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Her  
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You feel a pull, a tug in the direction of _her_.

Your love. The love of an eternity. The love you are separated from for the first time in...you can't measure the years. You'd say the first time since what men call "pre-history" but even you don't exaggerate that much. Your exploits have been documented by men, turned into song, told in tales woven over fires. Nonetheless, this is the first time since men replaced the Tuatha Dé Danann as rulers of your Land that you and your love have been separated.

It is your brother's fault. He's hiding from you; you don't know _why_ he did what he did, or how much malice was involved. Sometimes his "jokes" turn out more serious than he intends. Then again, sometimes he's a malicious bastard and you wish you weren't related to him. Just why, why did your father have to be so very fertile? You'd thought for some time now that your brother actually liked your love. They'd always gotten along, as much as two creatures with opposite personalities can get along. Til now, his "pranks" had been focused solely on his siblings, never their spouses.

But now she's gone, born into a family you've reincarnated into before, but in a branch that is so far away—you can't follow her. You are bound to the Land in a way that she is not; you can only go so far when you are playing human. You can't be born anywhere else. And now she's out of your physical reach.

You feel the tug toward her anyway, and you realize that because you haven't funneled your energies into a frail human body, you can at least keep tabs on her as she lives this mortal life. Not being with her physically does not mean losing her totally.

Except you know that being born into a mortal life means your memory of in-between, of immortality, is erased. She won't know who she is.

She won't know who you are.

She won't know why she feels incomplete. You will, but you won't be able to tell her.

Perhaps in a few decades when she's grown older, her spirit will remember its ancestral home and she'll come back in this new body. You could _do_ something then. Take a corporeal form and meet her as _you_, a god in his home land. Remind her. Woo her all over her again.

When she is born into her new, tiny, screaming body, you are there in the hospital with the human parents and extended family and the little boy who will be her brother. You idly hope he's a better brother than the ones you have been dealing with for eons. If he's not, you think, then at most she'll have to deal with him for 80 or so years. Not terribly long when you consider how long you've been suffering your own siblings.

While you and her family for this lifetime are waiting on her to make her debut to this life, you entertain yourself by swinging your transparent hand through people's heads, and by laying your ear against the straining abdomen of the woman birthing the love of your existence. You think it's funny that your love gets more active in her attempts to be born when you do this. She's already drawn to you, and she hasn't even drawn breath yet in this life.

Human births are so messy.

After the doctors and nurses get her breathing, you immediately make yourself known to her, cooing in her mind, making soothing noises, letting her know she's loved. To your surprise, she responds to you. Babies who are minutes old aren't, you think, usually calmed by hovering deities invading their tiny malleable brains. You love it. You love her.

You are beyond jealous when her human father is able to scoop her into his arms and reverently run his fingertips across her tiny face.

You are pissed off at your brother all over again for denying you this connection when he sent her to this inconsequential rainy corner of a continent you should never even have to think about. This should be _home_. This should be a hospital in Dublin or someplace, and you should be being born into this life within days of her. That's the way it works. That's the way it has happened since the two of you decided to see how mortals live.

You are going to find a way to permanently kill your worthless brother when you track him down and drag him out of hiding. It will make your father mad, but it will be worth the Dagda's wrath if you can make it happen.

Her family is talking now, beyond the little noises and cooing that occurs around infants. The nurse is asking for you love's name.

You hope it is something interesting, something dignified. You've both ended up with some very ugly names over the millennia you've been doing this.

"Isabella," says the mother. You don't mind this name so much. You would have preferred something Gaelic, but a name that translates to "beautiful" is appropriate, so you don't complain. You miss the name the father chooses as her middle name.

You watch as the nurse fills out the birth certificate.

Isabella Marie Swan.

Well, now. You think that she at least has a suitable name, since your love is, truly, a beautiful swan. She was the most beautiful on the Lough Dragan that day on Samhain when you picked her out amongst the crowd of fellow girls-turned-swans. You loved her when she appeared in your dreams. You loved her when you saw her as a swan. You have loved her in every incarnation you two have experienced.

You love her now, though she does not know you.

She will. You will do whatever is in your power to make sure that she is not alone in this incarnation; that your two souls will have whatever connection you can forge while you are...incorporeal here. Please, please let her in this lifetime visit your home land so that you can approach her and reconnect to her physically.

For a moment, you wonder if you can influence her family and convince them to move back to the father's family's ancestral home. Then you remember that any influence you have on mortals fades when you leave that same home.

Again, you make a vow to yourself to cause your brother an intense amount of pain. This is his fault.

The mother falls asleep, and the father gently places your fragile newborn love in a crib next to the hospital bed. Your love breathes deeply and squirms as her brother in this life places a cautious fingertip against her palm. "It's your job, Emmett," the father begins, "to take care of your baby sister. You and me, buddy. She's our responsibility."

Emmett, the little boy, the one who gets to play with your love as she grows and learns, nods solemnly, locking his big eyes with his father's. "Don't worry Daddy. I'll take good care of her. I won't let nobody hurt her." You decide this little boy isn't so bad. When you're bored, you might not wave your hand through his head. Making somebody lightheaded isn't what you do if you like them, after all.

You wrap your presence around her tiny body, and you hum her favorite lullaby in her mind, hoping she will get the rest she needs to start this life off right.


	2. We Two Must Be Twain

**A/N: An "extra" to accompany My Love Shall Ever Live Young.**

**Thank you, as always, to pogurl for being the best beta ever!**

**Disclaimer: The characters of Twilight are the property of Stephanie Meyer and Little, Brown...not to me!**

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Inchoate rage.

It festers in you, bubbling up as it forms and grows.

This is the among worst things you can imagine. You knew it was coming last year when she let that Mike child kiss her. Disgusting idiot, kissing your—your!—love someplace as pedestrian as under the bleachers of a high school. You've been dreading this, doing your best, hovering in her mind, trying to convince her she wasn't curious.

You hate. You hate with a white-hot passion that sears right through you. Somewhere in the tiny part of your mind that isn't consumed with rage and jealousy and hatred, you are surprised that the power of your emotions haven't melted the vinyl coverings of the school bus.

Your Bella, your mate, your love, the reason you exist, is sitting snugly into the side of a boy, who has been kissing your Bella, your heart, your everything, and has now moved his hand up the inside of her shirt, clumsily fondling her breasts.

Her perfect, beautiful breasts.

Her perfect, beautiful breasts that you can't touch or worship as they should be worshiped because you are stuck here, body-less. Impotent. Powerless.

You see her lean a bit, giving him easier access to her chest.

This is disgusting. She should be safe on the bus. This is a trip sponsored by the school. She should be free from the vile hands of boys.

Idiot children. They have no idea how to properly caress and love a woman. The uncoordinated gropings of a lanky boy who hasn't yet grown into his frame can't possibly pleasure her.

Normally, you find refuge in her mind.

Normally, she is not breathing heavier because she's locked lips with an unworthy child for the better part of half an hour.

Normally, you don't bother with the humans that surround your love, except to appreciate Emmett's ability to protect her and care for her, and Alice's talent for bringing her out of her own head and into the world.

Today is anything but normal, and you take steps to stop this blasphemy. You flit to the boring, mundane mind of the chaperone. You won't be able to force the balding man to act as you might be able to if you were home. Then again, if you were home you'd be the one with your hand up your Bella's shirt, and Jasper-going-to-die-a-painful-death Whitlock would not even be on your love's radar.

You hover around the cranky man's head and plant, repeatedly, the idea that the kids back there need to be checked on.

He ignores your suggestions. He genuinely doesn't care if his students are taking advantage of their relative seclusion; he wants only to rest on this long drive back from Vancouver. You push harder. You feed him waves of guilt, hoping he'll pick up on it and feel some guilt for neglecting his chaperone duties.

He nods off and sleeps.

You want to bury your fist so deep in his chest you hit the back ribs.

You want to rip that blond child's head off for daring to think he's worthy of touching your Bella.

You want.

You need.

You can do nothing. Your fists, clutched into tight balls by your fury, pass meaninglessly through his head. He only shakes it a little, mentioning to your love that he's a bit lightheaded.

Angry that it will do no good, you reach your insubstantial hands into his gut and pull. What you want is blood and pain and visceral reality. What you get is the blond child paling slightly and ceasing his attentions on your Bella to clutch at his stomach.

You listen.

He is nauseated.

You are pleased.

You have a tool, now.

If the bus was bad, this is worse. Over the past year your love has decided the boy is someone she trusts. Someone she trusts to learn with. From. Of.

Over the past year, you've considered the possibility of going home, forcing your energies into a physical manifestation—not human, but appearing so—and then finding a way to get that body here to court her.

You've not gone through with that idea. You know that whether you're playing human and being reborn or manifesting yourself into a physical body, you can only be away from the island for a limited period of time.

You'd come here, woo her. Win her, inevitably. Leave. Destroy her by your leaving. You know this outcome as sure as you know the kinks and bends of the River Boyne. Once you re-meet, once your connection is established and she knows what it feels like to be whole again, it will quite literally kill her if you are then separated for too long. You know this because in past incarnations, whoever has died last has died of a broken heart and a body that no longer wanted to function without the other half there.

The desperation you feels drives you think that perhaps her dying young in this life wouldn't be so bad; you could be together as Aengus and Cáer, immortal, at home, interacting with your family and the other residents of the Otherworld.

Your love for her, though, knows that snuffing out the fragile form she's taken now, or facilitating her death, is wrong. You will have to be patient, wait until she gives into the pull to come _home_ that you know she feels.

You can't watch this. You can't watch this ignorant child—though not as ignorant as he was last year on the bus, no he's learned quite a bit from your Bella—removes the last scrap of clothing from your heart, your love.

You pause with him as you both appreciate her beauty. You take in the smooth skin of her legs, marred by the worst of the scars from childhood injuries and all the more breathtaking in their imperfection. You run your ghostly hand over her flat stomach, press your lips in adoration against the birthmark just to the left of her navel.

One Day, you will be able to do this for real. She will feel it and know that it is your lips embracing her body in an envelope of love. One Day what you will be able to make her feel will push all other lovers out of her mind.

Today is not One Day, though, and _he_ slowly begins to kiss her legs, working his way up to that sacred juncture between her legs.

Where you should be.

You flutter, undecided. You can not take refuge in her mind while she is with someone else. You can not stay here so close, watching him love her in a way you are not currently able to. But you know that if you were to leave this space, leave her presence even for a few minutes, that you will suffer for the distance.

Emotional agony, or physical? That is the question. Hamlet had it so wrong.

You leave.

You come back.

You leave.

You return.

You start to reach out to twist his gut and make him nauseated. You think of her. What would she think, her lover suddenly becoming sick while he was with her, making a pathetic go at loving her? It is this thought that has kept you from fucking with him every time they've been in a similar position. You know your love, you know she would take the blame in on herself. You can not do that to her; there is no chance you will damage her ego or her emotions in such a way.

So the boy is safe for the time being. As soon as he crawls off of her, goes to wash up, though, he is yours.

You've learned over the past year that you can induce anxiety attacks in him. You rather enjoyed finding that out.

If he would stop touching your _wife_ you might stop your assault. Then again, maybe not. You need some entertainment. Making those around your love lightheaded only lasted so long before the fun in it faded. This blond-headed child is your pressure valve.

You've managed to distract yourself with your musings. They're still going.

You leave.

You come back.

You leave.

You return.

She's orgasmed at his hand. He's crawling up her, kissing her.

And she's crawling down him, kissing him. You see where this is going. No. No. NoNoNoNoNo. They haven't done this before. No.

Your head is in your hands, the heels digging into your eyes, hurting. Not as hurtful as what she's doing.

She's so innocent, even in her current position. She doesn't understand the power she has over that man-child in her mouth. She has no clue what she's doing to you.

_ Stop. _

Your hands are clutching, or would be if you could interact with objects here, the back of her rocking chair. If you were solid, you would've bent or snapped the wood with the force of your grip.

_ Stop._

_ Please stop._ You haven't begged anyone for anything since you asked your brother Bodb for help finding the mysterious girl—her—who was appearing in your dreams. You've never begged for anything else; not you. You trick or talk or charm or fight. Not beg.

You're begging now. You want this to stop.

If they continue, and he deflowers her, when you are corporeal, you will hunt him down and rip his testicles from his body. This you promise yourself. The gratification you feel from this distant possibility helps some.

Thank all that is holy to your people. They stopped. They were sated. The experimenting is enough for now.

How are you going to make it through her adulthood until you are able to be with her? How?

In the end, Jasper's testicles are safe. They never go farther. He finally sees—really _sees—_her cousin Alice and the days of their agreeable experimentation are over.

You are relieved. Every time they were intimate, you died just a little bit. You are a shade in her life, and each time you see her with someone else, you somehow become even less substantial.

You no longer find her mind a refuge while she in college. She's trying to fill the gap she feels in her life. Alcohol does not work; she abandons that path early, seeing the potential problems of drowning sorrows. She is not bold enough to try drugs stronger than pot, and even that holds little attraction for her. She tries to fill the need by garnering attention on stage. She's a fair actress. It is not the type of attention she craves. She stops auditioning for the plays.

You see her talking to herself in the mirror. "What else is left to try?" She asks her reflection.

You know. You have been in her brain for twenty years, after all. You understand the answers she will come up with, even though you know them to be wrong; they will not help her. Only you can, but she doesn't think you are anything but a persistent bit of imagination, and so you can not tell her.

Happiness.

It blooms in you, bubbling up through the cracks of your depression and paints your gray world in a rainbow of color.

She's filled out the application, been approved, found financial aid.

She'll be in Ireland for a study abroad program next semester. In less than three months, your love will be _home_ and you will be able to meet her there. Share your land's history.

She's older now. Talking her into moving to your home shouldn't be impossible. It won't be like it was when she was still a teenager and had to live in that irritating little rainy corner of what should be an inconsequential continent. She could complete her university experience on the island. _Home_. With you by her side.

She's so close you can taste it.

You forgive her the boys she's experimented with. She's still pure, still _yours_.

You've been influencing her mood with jigs and happy folks songs in the dark recesses of her mind, where you won't scare her or make her think she does actually need to see a doctor—something she's contemplated when you've pushed your presence too far forward in her consciousness—so now she simply thinks that she's coming up with these folks songs on her own.

You visit her dreams, ecstatic to interact with her in this limited way. You pave the way for your reunion with her; happy dreams of finding her love in Ireland. Happy dreams of an amazing lover who will take her breath away.

You plot to take her to the most breathtaking spots of your home.

Giddiness radiates off of you.

_So close._

She picks up the phone one rainy day and your whole world shatters.

She is broken, scared, on the floor and crying, clutching the phone in her hands.

Charlie is hurt. Badly.

Your Bella makes arrangements with her professors and flies home.

Your Bella makes arrangements with the university, her professors, and with the study abroad program. She's staying home to help Renee take care of Charlie, who is still in ICU.

Charlie wakes up and tries to talk your precious heart into continuing on with her studies in Ireland; he knows how much she wanted to go, how excited she was about the opportunity.

She declines, and opts instead to stay home for nearly a year while her father recovers.

Your world stops altogether when she decides that, now that she's a year behind, she can't afford to take a semester abroad, to take a class she doesn't really need in Ireland.

_ No._

_ Please._ She was so close. You were so close.

When you try to reintroduce the folk songs and jigs into the back of her mind, humming them gently, she firmly pushes back and ignores that part of her 'imagination.'

You know it is killing her to do it, too. And because of that your heart splinters further.

You use all of your limited influence to make sure that the drunk who ran into Charlie does not wake up from his coma.

She would be angry at you for that, but she won't know, you won't tell her, and you have no regrets.

You spiral into depression with her, unable to make yourself cheer her up as you have in the past. You were so close to being reunited. It was going to be perfect.

She's trying in earnest to fill the gapping hole in her spirit. To feel something other than disconnection. Thankfully she'd already discovered that cutting her arms did her no good; you are proud that your limited influence on her mind and her dreams pushed her past that phase. Her arms still have the faint scars, though.

You were going to kiss those scars when she studied in Ireland. When will you get that chance now?

Now she has decided to take the final step in killing you.

You sit dejectedly in her mind as she weighs her options. She is methodical. This will not be a flight of impulse for her. She wants to plan her first time. And so she muses over the possibilities. The dark-haired boy she's been on a few dates with, and has a certain affection for? The good-looking redhead in her theory class whose philosophical ramblings turn her on to a certain degree? The blond frat boy that reminds her of Jasper?

_ None of them_, you push. _Hold out for better_.

As usual these days, she ignores you.

She picks the redhead, of course.

It's rubbing salt in your wound. He could be you if he were more handsome, smarter, more clever, better built, more gentle with her.

He could never be you.

But you understand that he is her approximation of you; you are her standard, subconsciously and consciously.

She pursues him. It doesn't take long.

He is not worthy of her, but he is also apparently not a complete waste of flesh, because he responds to her, allows himself to be caught.

No matter how anxious you try to make him, how lightheaded he gets, how queasy he feels—and you realize unhappily that the blond child from teen days past must have been especially sensitive to you—this boy your Bella has pursued will not be deterred.

You poke around in his mind a bit and discover that he genuinely loves your Bella.

Of course he does. She's _Bella_. Only a total idiot wouldn't love her.

You hate him even more because he loves her.

You hate her choice a little less because she's chosen someone who loves her.

Your first impulse is to find a way to make him die. Make him lightheaded as he drives, try to keep him from waking up in the morning. Something. Anything to stop your love's plans to use him to lose her purity.

But, he truly loves her and it is that genuine feeling that spares his life.

He lives. You make no promises to spare him later, but for now he lives.

You spiral, out of mind.

Staying in the room while he takes this final step with her is not an option. You thought her explorations in high school were torture. This agony is soul-deep. It marks you, bends you, changes you, though you are essentially an unchanging being.

You are changed. You aren't sure if it is for the better.

Like you did before, when she was with that blond man-child, you resort to begging.

In the back of her mind, you try to get her to stop this.

This.

This is not where you should be.

You leave.

And you cannot go back, not yet. It's too much.

For the first time since you wrapped yourself around her newborn form twenty years ago and cooed into her mind with reassurance and love, you really leave.

You go home, trying to find solace in the passage-tomb of _Brú na Bóinne. _It is cold comfort. Familiar, but not home without her in it. The triple spiral does nothing for you as you run your fingers lightly over the grooves.

You collapse to your knees.

The piercing, keening sound you hear, you realize, is your own wail of despair.

Being away from her now is shredding you and the pain is manifesting in innumerable ways. You'll have to follow the tug, the pull, towards _her_ soon if you want to endure.

Do you want to endure?

Is enduring worth it if you have to be present for that debacle, over and over?

_How many lovers?_ you wonder in self-torture. How many lovers will she take in her lifetime, before she finally capitulates to the tug she feels for this place, for home?

How much can you take?

You are almost literally falling apart at the seams because you are not near her. You have to go back.

How can you?

Do you have a limit on the amount of misery you can survive?

No. There is no limit. Not when it comes to her.

Anything, for her.

You return.

She is asleep now, so you keep her company in her dreams, marking time until you are reunited and you can show her how a woman should truly be loved.

She's already thrown the redhead out.

_Sonnet 36 Let me confess that we two must be twain_

_Let me confess that we two must be twain,  
Although our undivided loves are one:  
So shall those blots that do with me remain  
Without thy help by me be borne alone.  
In our two loves there is but one respect,  
Though in our lives a separable spite,  
Which though it alter not love's sole effect,  
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.  
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,  
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,  
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,  
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:  
But do not so; I love thee in such sort  
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. _


	3. Alice

**This addition to the MLSELY extras has been rattling around in my head since November. I've worked on it in fits and starts since then, changing the perspective and tense and wrestling with Alice's thoughts until it felt right.**

**Though the first two Extra one-shots were all about Edward Aengus, this is a slice of Alice's story. **

**So here is Alice in high school.**

**This is wholly un-beta read. I'm feeling impatient and uncharacteristically confident in my proofreading skills. Please turn a blind eye to my typos, and feel free to send me a nice PM if you catch something glaring.  
**

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**ALICE**

I put my elbows on the desk in front of me and rest my head in my hands. I don't know what to do. Nothing I say works. Nothing I do works. Emmett is in college and can't help. He can't keep coming back here just to look out for his kid sister. That's my job now that Em is gone: look out for Bella. Be her buffer between her head and the rest of the world.

Why, why won't she just...socialize?

No, that isn't right. 'Won't' is not the case. Bella almost, almost _can't_. There is something within her that doesn't let her connect and relate to people like I do. Like Emmett does. The way our parents do. There are times when Bella just retreats back into her mind and stays there. She doesn't share it with me. With family, Bella is loving. Giving. She connects to us.

It is as though there must be a bond of blood for her to feel and react to someone.

This makes no sense to me. We are the same age. We are cousins in fact but sisters by bond and upbringing. I have been with Bella her whole life. There has been no trauma. No significant injury. Nothing to recover or hide from.

But she hides.

When we were little, she tried to blend in. When I had a sleep-over birthday party in fifth grade I invited every girl in our class.

Everyone came of course. There were only about twenty other girls. Of those twenty, Bella only talked to me and Angela Webber.

And barely Angela, at that.

Six years later and it is still only me and sometimes, on a social day, Angela.

Scratch that. Until yesterday on the bus ride home from Vancouver, it was just me and sometimes Angela. Jasper, it seems, is in the rotation now.

I know my cousin. I know that the boys in school have next to zero draw for her. Tyler asked her to the the Spring Dance in eighth grade and she ran from him and hid in the girl's bathroom. She let Mike kiss her under the bleachers our freshman year and hasn't spoken to him since. She watches no boy, reacts positively to no boy's attention. The entirety of the junior and senior classes know it: Bella Swan is frigid.

I asked her once if this bothered her. She shrugged and said it was true. "I have," she told me, "no interest in boys. I'm curious, but not enough to...to. I don't know. Lower my standards? Dabble in something that can't last because I already know it isn't what I want? I don't know how to put it into words, Alice, but there is something more waiting for me later. These boys seem like a waste of time."

Clearly the girl changed her mind.

No one told Jasper she is frigid and not willing to play with high school boys, I guess. Maybe he doesn't care because he is a year ahead of us. A senior can unfreeze the junior class' ice queen, right? You would think. But no one else has succeeded.

I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes until I can stop the tears by focusing on the pressure my hands are creating behind my eyes. It hurts, that Bella would choose Jasper. I've had my eye on him for ages. I was too shy in the face of her dismissal of our schoolmates to tell her I finally found someone who seriously catches my interest. I have no problem babbling on about who is cute or has good fashion sense. But to tell the girl who cares nothing for boys that I have crush? That my crush has moved past 'crush' stage and full-on into love-from-afar?

I couldn't, can't do it.

And now the ice queen has the only boy I actually care about feeling her up on the field trip bus while I, Alice, the girl who is in everything, knows everyone, sit alone in my own thoughts.

Fuck irony.

Irony is not poetic, or romantic, or karmic or any other "ic." It is a bitch.

For just a moment, for the first time in my life, I hate my cousin. I hate her for unknowingly intimidating me into silence when I should be comfortable talking to her as my sister and confidante. I hate her for accepting Jasper's advances. I hate her for indulging in curiosity about boys with him. I know my cousin, and I know that this will not be a relationship. This is not a crush or even love. It is curiosity, and if I know her she's been quietly thinking on who she finds worthy to learn with. I hate her for not telling me she was contemplating this.

I cry because I was too much a coward to talk to her the way I should have, as a sister, telling her my thoughts and crushes and hopes regarding him. I cry because obviously there is something about me that discouraged her from talking to me, too. I cry because what if this means I have forever lost my chance with him?

I had such a strong Feeling that we would be together. My Feelings are always right. Always.

Until yesterday's bus ride from Vancouver.

My fucking best friend, my sister, my cousin, has me doubting my infallible Feelings now.

It isn't working. The tears are leaking down my face no matter how hard I push the heels of my hand into my eyes. I am going to look like shit. I know my eyeliner and mascara and carefully shaded eyeshadow are smeared all over now.

I take a shaky breath.

Maybe this bit of high school normalcy is what my cousin needs.

Maybe a boy like Jasper is what it takes to get her to leave her head for at least a little while, and come participate in life like the rest of us.

I can do this.

I can love her even when she doesn't know she hurts me.

I can plaster a smile on my face and talk fashion, superficially talk about boys, join her in harassing Emmett.

I am Mary Alice Cullen, and if Jasper is what my cousin has been looking for, if he is what she needs, I will support her.

Family comes first.

Sisterhood before unrequited love.

I can do this.

She'd better be fucking happy with him.

That is the only way I can make this work.

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	4. Little Sister

**This was written as a part of the 30 days Emmett project, created & hosted by HMonster04, TheHeartofLife, and AccioBourbon, three Emmett lovers who are converting everyone else, one fan at a time. **

**Summary: Part of the _My Love Shall Ever Live Young_ extras... in the main story, Emmett mentions kicking Jasper's ass 'cause he'd caught him with Bella in the backseat at a high school football game.**

**Thanks to Pogurl and AccioBourbon for the pre-reading and feedback. Y'all rock. Hugs and kisses to HMonster, Accio, and HeartofLife for the Emmett 30 days of epic-ness.**

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**Little Sister**

He'd come back to Forks from UDub to see the old team win the game that sent them to the playoffs, to cheer on his old teammates, and bask in nostalgia for a few moments. The game is long over, and the high school's parking lot rapidly approaching empty, when Emmett sees Jasper's crappy little hatchback.

The windows are just beginning to fog up, and with the hatchback's faint rocking, Emmett knows that someone is back there with him. Good ol' Jasper, folding his long, lanky-ass body into the backseat of the little car, with a girl, no less. He doesn't know how his friend does it; Emmett is claustrophobic just sitting in the tin can with wheels.

He shakes his head. Maybe it's Alice. She's had a crush on his buddy Jasper for years now; she could be avoiding her parents by not using her own car. The idea of little Alice banging some guy in the backseat of a car isn't appealing-is actually pissing him off as he thinks about it-but it's Alice and he knows she's aware of boys and social do's-and-don'ts. Better than his sister, who has zero experience with boys.

With a smirk, Emmett settles on righteous anger and a healthy does of violent mischief. He'll kick Jasper's ass for "taking advantage" of Alice (as if Alice the All-Knowing could be taken advantage of) and then they'll be the cute couple Alice has always wanted, and everything will be right in the world.

Flexing his fists, he prepares to have some fun at Jasper's expense. It isn't often he leaves the way wide open like this.

He's about three seconds from ripping open the door and embarrassing his friend when he gets a good look through the window at who is in the backseat with his old teammate. It isn't Alice. In that instant, he understands the phrase "to make the blood boil." Before, it had been something he thought was stupid-boiling blood would hurt, right? Pain equaling anger hadn't made sense.

He almost laughs, it's so ridiculous; he knows the reputation of Ice Queen that Bella has. That she'd be doing something she should never, ever, be doing, and in such a low place as the backseat, is unbelievable. But it _is_ Bella in the back. With Jasper between her legs. Bella's shirt is pushed up around her shoulders and she is all skin, and Emmett can see almost everything-including what Jasper is doing to his baby sister.

Seeing his sister almost completely naked in the seat wrenches his gut. He stumbles back several steps in shock. It couldn't be-it isn't-but it is. His piece of shit _best friend_ is going down on Emmett's baby sister. That dirty mother fucker.

Emmett wants, in that moment, a red-hot poker. First he'll use it to castrate Jasper, then he'll use it to gouge out his own eyes in an attempt to erase the memory of seeing Bella like that. He swore over her crib, gave his word, that he'd protect her and look out for her, and he's failed. Because of the guy he'd thought of as his brother from another mother.

Bella's voice carries out from the car, and Emmett knows that he can't barge in and interrupt. He can beat Jasper to a pulp whenever he wants, and he surely will, but Bella is the single most important person in his life after their mother, and nothing is worth her being hurt. If he does the wrong thing and she's very hurt, he's afraid she'll shut him out completely. He can't stand the thought of her not talking to him.

He walks away and hates himself for it. What he ought to be doing is breaking Jasper's face in the woods lining the parking lot.

At his parent's house, he folds himself into the porch swing and waits. He hopes revenge really is best cold. Or maybe lukewarm. He knows he won't wait long enough for it to get cold. The image of Bella, almost naked with her legs spread wide for Jasper, is seared into his mind and he will never, ever forget it. He lurches to the railing, and the chili dog he'd eaten comes back up onto Renee's flowers.

He's not sure how long he sits there, rocking pensively, getting angrier and angrier, but he's wound tight when Jasper's little hatchback trundles up their driveway and Bella slides out, looking pleased with herself. She blinks in surprise when she sees Emmett sitting on the porch, but she recovers quickly, and bounces up the steps to give him a big hug.

"Big brother! I saw you at the game, but you never said 'hi!' Did you have fun?"

"I did. It was a good game." Emmett can barely keep his voice even. But that's the deal: don't let Bella know anything is wrong. Get her inside. Get Jasper alone. So he bears it, and smiles down at her. "Jasper had a good game, so I'm taking him out for some guys-only time. You okay with that?"

She shrugs, looking blissfully unconcerned. "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

_Oh I don't know, _Emmett thinks_. Because girls get clingy when they start banging their boyfriends. _

Emmett arches an eyebrow. "Jasper's bringing you home from the football game. Usually that means-"

Bella huffs. "Don't be silly. It's just Jasper, brother bear. Go do your guy thing." She gives him another quick hug, and then darts inside.

Just Jasper? What the hell does his (former) buddy think, stringing his baby sis along like this? You don't do what they were doing and call your partner in crime 'just' anyone. White heat fills Emmett's eyes. It doesn't take him long to bound down the stairs and make it to Jasper, who's gotten out of the car, but made no move to tell Bella goodnight.

"Hey man," Jasper says, and holds out his fist in greeting.

Emmett's return fist bump is harder than necessary, and Jasper's eyes lower in confusion.

"Want to go out for a bit?" Emmett can't help the growl that accompanies his words, and he's glad to see that in addition to confusion, he now sees Jasper look worried.

"Sure?"

It's half answer, half question, but Emmett isn't answering, and instead he slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door with a slam.

"The usual place?"

Usually when they hang out, they go to a quiet spot in the woods where they can overlook a small ravine and just shoot the shit. Emmett doesn't want to go there, though. It's too special. Bringing Jasper there now will only pollute it.

"Nah. That's a bit of a drive tonight. What about the park out behind the bus barn?"

Jasper shrugs in agreement and points the tin can in the right direction. When they pull up to the park, which is hidden from view of the town by a row of thick manicured hedges and the fence that surrounds the school district's bus maintenance barn, Emmett launches himself out of the car and walks around to the driver's side. Jasper has the window down, so Emmett leans in, resting his forearms on the door, and gets in Jasper's face.

"I saw you in the parking lot tonight. With Bella in the back seat. We're going to have a talk."

"Emmett-" Jasper's face is white, and he has a classic 'oh shit!' expression.

It stoke's Emmett's anger high, and in the beat of his heart he's as enraged as he was standing there in the high school parking lot. There's no thought. He rips open the door and reaches into the car and wraps his hand around the closest part of Jasper that he can reach-his left bicep-and, powered by anger, he drags his friend out of his car and shoves him into the cracked asphalt and gravel. He kicks the door shut.

Emmett bends down and snatches Jasper up again, and it is like his friend isn't close to his own height, or a wiry lean kind of muscled. Jasper had parked close to the tree line along the back side of the park, so he hauls the now struggling Jasper into the woods.

He has every intention of putting Jasper into the hospital. The guy was his friend. His cousin had been crushing on him for years. And what does the jackass do? Take Bella, Emmett's baby sister and Alice's best friend, in the fucking back seat in the high school parking lot.

Bella is worth so much more. Alice deserves better. Their friendship should've been stronger than this.

He whips Jasper around and all but tosses him into a thick fir tree. Emmett is viciously gratified to see little bits of blood where Jasper's palms and forearms had hit the cracked asphalt. He hopes the tree's bark bites into his back.

Jasper opens his mouth and starts to say something, but his eyes lock on Emmett's, and whatever it is he sees there-rage? hatred? betrayal? disappointment? There's so much Emmett is feeling, it could be anything-and he closes his mouth, just nodding once, accepting the inevitable punishment.

Emmett is already swinging. He feels Jasper's nose and cheek under his fist, and hears a snap, and knows that at the very least, the boy's nose is broken. He whips his arm back for a second swing, and the sight of the other boy, sagging against the tree and bleeding, is satisfying, but not enough. Nothing will be enough for what he'd seen tonight, for the casual disregard his friend had shown Bella when he'd brought her home _after._

Jasper doesn't fight back, and Emmett takes it as tacit agreement that he'd fucked up and won't repeat the offense. When he's finished venting his rage on the friend he'd brought into his home and into the lives of his family, when he's punished him for the utter betrayal, he scoops the unresisting form up into his arms and carries him to the backseat, where Jasper's blood drips onto the cloth upholstery and, Emmett hopes, wipes out the stains of any other fluids that might be there.

He drives Jasper to the hospital. Looking in the review mirror as they pull into Forks General, he glares at the swollen face he sees. Jasper's eyes haven't swollen completely shut, yet, and Emmett is pretty sure Jasper can see him. "Not a word to Bella about this," he warns. "You can tell Uncle Carlisle whatever you want, I'll deal with that fallout if I have to, but not a word to my little sister. We clear?"

Jasper's nod is short, but definitive.

Emmett cradles his friend against his chest as he carries him into the emergency room, and it's when harsh florescent hospital lights illuminate them that he sees all the damage that he's done, and he begins to regret giving into his anger.

Charlie and Carlisle have been telling him for years that at his size, with his remarkable strength, he can't loose control of his temper, but that's exactly what he's done. The nurses swarm over them, Jasper is placed on a gurney, and they work quickly to take care of him. The vestiages of Emmett's fury are gone, now, as he assess Jasper's injuries. Both eyes are swollen shut, nose obviously broken, left cheekbone a misshapen swollen mass, jaw twisted oddly. Emmett winces. He remembers how _that_ hit felt. Jasper's holding his left arm at a weird angle, and Emmett realizes it's probably dislocated; he has a vague memory, through the haze of anger, of feeling the shoulder give. Bruising is already starting to show up, and it's painfully clear that along with the obvious injuries Jasper is going to be a patchwork of black bruises soon.

Christ. Had _he_ done that? To his friend?

Emmett's stomach heaves, but he's frozen to the spot, his feet planted firmly on the linoleum floor. He wants to look away, but he can't because that's his friend they're rushing to the back, and he's the one who hurt him. Uncle Carlisle comes up to him, is talking, but it sounds like he's speaking through water, his words indistinct and distorted. Emmett can't look at him anyway because he's too busy tracking the gurney as it's wheeled to the back. Where the surgical rooms are.

He focuses on his immediate surroundings in time to see Uncle Carlisle examining his hands, which are bruised, scrapped, and bloody at the knuckles.

"My office," Carlisle snaps, his expression grim.

He can only nod dumbly in response.

He hopes Jasper doesn't die, he isn't permanently hurt, and that his friend's baseball scholarship at UDub isn't ruined by his injuries. He hopes he's forgiven for acting like he's nothing better than a thug.

In his uncle's office, he drops into a chair and rests his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

"_Fuck_."

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**Thanks for reading! Don't forget to review, and check out the great Emmett-focused writing that's happening with the 30 days of Emmett. I have it as a favorite author. **


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